Q&A with Mike Laidley, vice president of Orbital ATK’s Next Generation Launch program (members only)

Views from an airliner, close-up high-speed launch pad cameras, and photographers around the Guiana Space Center in the jungle of South America show the twilight launch of a European Ariane 5 rocket Saturday with three commercial satellites heading for orbits more than 22,000 miles over the equator.

Boeing’s first Starliner crew capsule to fly in space departed its factory Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a trip to a launch pad a few miles away, where teams raised the craft atop an Atlas 5 rocket for liftoff next month on an unpiloted test flight to the International Space Station.

Peter Beck, the founder and chief executive of Rocket Lab, recently discussed the outcome of the company’s first attempted orbital test flight and plans for future missions.